This blog is an ongoing record of traveling world with bamboo bike and starting / growing up social enterprise,"Bamboo Samurai". Bamboo Samurai will make bamboo bike and attractive bamboo products by using only Japanese bamboo. I will contribute to develop craftsmanship, coexist with bamboo forests in Japan and to build ecological world all over the world. I am loving Nature, biking, and bamboo. Please keep supporting Bamboo Samurai! Bamboo Samurai Founder,Takashi

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November 16, 2010

I woke up 4:00a.m. took a hot shower, in the mirror, I saw scraped points of my left leg and hip, these were almost healed. I checked weather forecast on the website, it showed me it was cloudy this morning and afternoon, and rain at night in Harrodsburg. And in Berea, the next stop will rain all day tomorrow. I assembled time schedule both on Monday and Tuesday.

I checked e-mail and wrote some responses. Some of these were from Japan. Though I felt some nostalgia, I focused on this trip.
One of these was about my "Donation project" which I have been proceeding in this trip. I want to donate some "bamboo plants" and "bamboo plates and bowls" to 2 special places in the church, the Glide Memorial Church San Francisco.

One is the "creative space" which is a very pleasant small gallery used for glide's members and guest art exhibits. The art exhibit they have now displays photos taken by the Glide Women’s Art and Empowerment Group who took photos about issues around homelessness in that community; an earlier exhibit was produced by the children in about a class they had with Cecil Williams. The room has high ceiling (12-15 feet high), and uses alot of recycled and renewable materials, including bamboo flooring.
The other space is the new "demonstration kitchen", which is used to provide cooking classes to neighbors in the community about improving diets through cooking healthier meals using local ingredients. Their first cooking class was one week ago and had 10 families; the next class has more than 20 families signing up. It is a normal size kitchen, like in a home, and the location is just next to the creative space.

The Glide showed me what beautiful it is to contibute to public sociey and help each other in this March 2010. At that time I visited to study social enterprise/ business, non-profit organization in San Francisco Bay area under the VIA program. I sang songs/ gospel at Glide(like that), and I heard the names of babies who were born/ of names of people who died there in a week. I felt strong emotion and realized that what beautiful it was to help each other, to build friendly community toward the future. "This was the social enterprise, this was the social business, my way", suddenly I said to myself at that time. Since then I have been believed so. When I came back to Japan in April, as the first step that Bamboo Samurai contributes to public society, I decided to donate Glide by fundraising of "Cross country trip with bambop bike".
I have still learning what beautiful it is to help each other from lots of people I met in this trip. Through the donation, I want to raise awareness of eco-friendly life using bamboo to children, people of United States and Japan broadly.
I have been proceeding this plan with my friend, talking about fundraising system, cooperator, numbers of bamboo plants, and..and...
I decided to late start today, because I wanted to write responce to my friend about this project to proceed asap. I will update about this donation project in detail up on my blog, please check and please support me if you get interested in!

We started 9:00a.m. It was very cloudy, I felt cold. I wore arm/ leg warmer. I saw 2 deers on the road this morning but did not saw deer hunters. Deers jumped across the road and looked at me from far. Tyo Pretty.

And I saw a doll of horse riding jockey in a garden, Kentucky Derby horse racing... Funny.
In Mackville, I dropped by a post office to send letters to Japan from Kentucky. I talked to office staff and a lady for some time, enjoyed talking. Toyota, cheese burger, road in Kentucky, deer hunting, Japan. In Rose Hill, I dropped by a grocery store and bought 2 breads, and talked to the boss of the store. "Good day for biking! Do you still feel hot?" I replied "Ya", he laughed much and showed me a direction to Harrodsburg. I am loving Kentucky.

In Kentucky I am feeling the people around Kentucky are very friendly to bike person.
We arrived at Harrodsburg at 1:00p.m. We stayed at Anderson Dean Community Park, here was a big park, there were some spaces with roof, and shelters, baseball grounds..and..and.. Tyo good! I cooked dinner at 5:00p.m. :Mexican rice(it was hot, so good for this season), 2 ramen, 0.6 litter coffee. It was not rain yet, felt a little bit cold aroud 8:00p.m. Good night. Tomorrow maybe I will be "wet rat" (In Japanese, if the people were wet by heavy rain, the people are called "wet rat")